Will McClatchey grew up on the White Mountain Reservation in Arizona before his family moved to Oregon where he completed High School then College at Oregon State University earning B.S. degrees in Anthropology and Pharmacy. He worked as a community and consultant pharmacist for ten years during which time he earned an M.S. in Ethnobotany from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in Botany (Evolutionary Biology) from the University of Florida. He is currently Professor of Botany at the University of Hawaii. His research addresses hypotheses about the evolution of patterns of human interactions with plants and ecosystems. While his past research was largely conducted in the South and Western Pacific region his current research is taking place in S.E. Asia where he is studying relationships between distribution patterns of human knowledge of biodiversity and actual biodiversity.